Fair Use Law

Fair Use is federal law that allows for people to use copyrighted material for purposes of criticism, teaching, news reporting, or parody without authorization of the copyright holder. In terms of the fair use law and the classroom, my interpretation of the law is that copyrighted material can be used without the permission of its holder as long as it is used for educational purpose. The article written by Elizabeth and Robert Lagran called "Copyright and Technology" states that, "to qualify for fair use, there are four factors that must be weighed in: 1)purpose of use, 2) nature of the work 3)amount of use and 4)effect on the market." In order for us teachers to be able to use copyrighted material without permission, these four factors must be put into practice. As future educators, we need to make sure that what we present to our students is allowed and its of fair use. Since students tend to model what one does, they might believe that they are allowed to do the same thing and might follow in our footsteps without realizing the legal complications that come along with the issue. We need to ensure that we teach students how to use the materials or resources that they find on the internet correctly by teaching them how to implement and consider the four factors of the fair use law prior to using the resources.

There are resources that one can use as teachers to find resources that we can use fairly in the classroom such as "Reproduction of Copyrighted Works by Educators and Librarians". That book allows for one to analyze how the law works and can be used by us to not only understand it but now how to use it properly as well. Although it is becoming a little tough and complicated around these times since both students and teachers are becoming more and more technology savvy, there are ways to be able to use these copyrighted materials. We just have to learn and teach our students how to do it correctly.